


Promise of Elysion

by Helix



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/F, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-18 00:56:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21519286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helix/pseuds/Helix
Summary: If you have not completed the Daughters of Artemis questline and don't want to be spoiled for one of the possible outcomes, don't read this. If you are in a good mood and want to stay in a good mood, probably don't read this.I had a lot of feelings and was sort of deeply traumatized even when I managed to choose the best possible outcome I was reminded why heroes don't get happy endings and that fundamentally AC: Odyssey is constructed as a Greek tragedy. So I wrote through it. I don't normally write in the first person voice either but this game adequately made me feel things so viscerally it seemed right.If you're really emo, listen to the "Pain, Loss & Love" track fro the Wonder Woman score while reading this for full effect.
Relationships: Daphnae/Kassandra (Assassin's Creed)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	Promise of Elysion

There were 9 Sacrifices I made in offering to Artemis. The first 8 were an honour rarely bestowed, the pride that’d be the envy of any worthy hunter, warrior, king - and even god. One by one, these mighty creatures of glory, fearsome and majestic were felled by my bow or my blade, etching their stories into my skin on the way, the marks they left a determined reminder that they had once roamed this realm. But the 9th… though nowhere near the size of the others, left the deepest of wounds. One that may not ever scar.

Her dying breath had carried the final blow.

“… someone I love.”

Her voice, now forever silent, echoed in my mind. I had pressed my lips to hers in that instant, as if my breath could somehow preserve hers. But I knew better than to implore the Goddess to save her daughter, such a request to this deity could only be met with scorn, and to show such soft heartedness in front of her sisters would have dishonoured her.

I hoisted her on my shoulders and climbed atop the highest peak, one overlooking the huntress’s village. Solemnly and ever loyally, my companion the wolf trod in the wake of my ascent. At its zenith, I laid her down with the gentle embrace of a lover she’d never know - our nights together had been as wild and fierce as the landscapes I had travelled to complete our sacred hunt. There, under the celestial light, the eye of Artemis herself, the mountain became the altar, and Daphnae the most precious of offerings. Did the Goddess know that this would be the greatest of gifts, the ultimate sacrifice she would ever receive?

The clouds curled away from the Moon, as if she were pulling back her veil. I knelt beside the wild one who had so deftly ignited my passions and gentled my heart, and it is as I gazed upon her face - serene as it was - that my soul finally tore in two, ripping under the weight of the wound she’d left in her final battle. The wolf lay protectively beside us, ever watchful as sorrow clawed me to the core and I could no longer hold back the tears overflowing of their own volition from my eyes, staining the red huntress paint on my face.

I stroked her cheek and reached for my pouch of drachmae. Coins for the ferryman. But thought gave me pause. Surely Artemis held a place for Daphnae in Elysion? Surely the Goddess would not have been slighted by her devoted daughter’s words, rather exalted. _My heart may belong to you, but my duty is to Artemis_ , she had told me, before submitting to her beloved mother’s dominion. _Artemis, my fate is in your hands_. I could only deduce that the Huntress herself had chosen her daughter’s fate, for any other outcome would have disappointed Daphnae, crushed her heart. To fight with anything less than every drop of the spartan blood in my veins, every inch of muscle sculpted by survival, would’ve been an insult. Surely, such a life of pious devotion and a death heroic and abnegating merited eternal joy. Yet even this, was of little comfort to me.

Perhaps I was not forward thinking enough, but for the greater part of my life, each day was a battle, and even before my fall from Sparta I had learned that each battle was about surviving. For so long all I had known was the here and now. And tonight I was inconsolable, the now was unbearable. Time is subjective, and Khronos has a way of turning the wheel for each in a different way. My present stretched on, at once unending and precocious.

Above Ikaros circled this natural altar, his presence felt more than seen, but he did not need to look on in order to know my grief. I pressed my forehead against Daphnae’s and felt nothing but the swell of strife within my chest; I was now Artemis’s most beloved huntress, yet her daughters’s laws and their way of life were the reason I would never be completely whole again. “Daphnae…” the blackness of rage coiled around my soul but I knew there was no one to direct my anger at but myself. She had known, and bitterly I had to face the fact she had been right: the gods had a sense of humour in bringing us together. Was I simply an instrument of the Fates, for Olympos’s amusement? All I had been capable of doing at the time was repeat her name, as if Echo herself had possessed me, unable to express the truly indomitable things in my heart. Although it was but hours ago, it already felt like a lifetime - a time where many days, moons - years, unfurled before us. If I knew then, what I know now… Yet, it was clear there wasn’t a single path that wouldn’t have led to heartbreak, safe for one - and selfishly, it is not one I would have chosen, for the thought of never knowing Daphnae would’ve been in a sense crueler, in its own twisted irony.

In the delirium of my loss, I looked at the cold hard rock she laid upon and sought to make her more comfortable. It was then, that I realized what the divine pelts I had brought back were for. I went to work, deliberate as I arranged them into a luxurious bedding. Softly I lifted her - did she seem already lighter, or was my pain playing tricks on me? - and rested her on the furs, before I covered her with the most beautiful piece of all: the hide of Keryneia. 9 offerings reunited, for the Goddess of the Wilds.

The night air was still, still enough to make me wonder if wind had ever existed.

“Who will I leave _my_ people to?” I asked quietly in near protest, a response too late to her dying words. My gaze fell to her face, hoping the peace now permanently cradling her features could appease me. “Daphnae…” I felt only agony. From the moment our souls had entwined, I understood that she was everything I never knew I always wanted, _needed_.

The rustling of feathers momentarily tore my gaze away. Ikaros fixed me expectantly before flicking to Daphnae. My stomach knotted and my throat collapsed. I had been so foolishly confident that once my hunt was completed we’d have a lifetime to revel in each other but looking at the golden eagle that had shadowed me for as long as I could remember, I knew that it was now I had to tell her, or I may never have another chance. Denial was a formidable foe, and shaking off its misleading whispers was a battle few mortals ever won. I _f I did not say farewell_ , it tried to reason, _then she wouldn’t really have to go_. But the trickster failed in its mischief this time, and time had already run out.

I choked on a sob and weakly shook my head as hot, stinging water trailed from my eyes once more, marring the immaculate fur that I’d wrapped her in. “Daphnae…” My tongue, hobbled in the last hours, now seemed freed as if unbound by Hermes himself. “I will hear your name in the lament of the wolves, I will hear your laughter in the giggle of the stream, and in the grumble of the bear I will find your fearsome roar. Where you lay, the eagles will one day nest and forth from your bones, the glorious Cypress will spring and the finest stags will graze at its foot. The lion, the lynx and the leopard will retrace your step to find the blessing of the Huntress, _your_ blessing. Each time the hound bays, it will be a prayer to you as it clamours for the hunt. Your sisters will sing a song that will be carried by the birds until all of that which is living and all of the dead and all of the gods - man and beast - will know of you and your story. Of this, I will make certain, for while Artemis may have been your Mother, she has many daughters to regard but I… I can promise that in my flesh, my blood, my bones and my heart there is only you. You are my only one.” My lips ghosted over hers one final time. “Today you may be my greatest sorrow… but forever you will be my greatest truth.”

My knuckles brushed against her cheekbones one last time, with the light reverence of a feather, showing no trace of the quaking I felt within.

“I love you.”

Silence did not hang after my words and as if on cue, Ikaros cried out to the skies, spreading his wings. As though Aeolus had been awaiting this signal, the winds blew forth allowing the raptor to rise with ease. I watched him soar to the stars then away westward, until my eye could no longer see the glint of his feathers in the starlight or his shadow against the glow of the Moon.

Daphnae was gone.

For good.

If the gods willed it, perhaps we would one day be reunited in the Islands of Joy, but the gods made no promises to the world of mortals. And it was so, this knowledge heavily sinking in my chest, that I pulled the shimmering pelt of the Keryneian Hind up higher, now completely covering the lifeless body before me.

I shifted, and the wolf’s ears flicked back at me briefly in response to the sound of my spear being planted in the ground just beneath the rock. My fingers dug into the loam beside it, gripping a handful of soil that offered the perfect contrast to the fine hide I had turned into a funerary shroud. This seemed to be all I could take, and my strength was robbed shortly thereafter. I sat with my back turned to the altar, one hand gripping the shortened handle of my weapon, head bowed in defeat.

9 hours had passed before the Sun began to rise but even at its apex, its rays failed to warm me. 9 hours more would pass from then before the Moon would rise, and the she wolf who had remained my silent guardian until then, would sing Daphnae’s first lament. Her voice carried over Chios alone at first, then joined by many others. It was after this chant that the wolf finally rose and stalked off into the night.

9 nights and 9 days I mourned her, my mind and my soul as though disconnected from the needs of my body, along with my Spartan foundation keeping me together. The Sun did not warm me even as it tanned my skin, and the cover of the night’s clouds could bring no chill greater than the cold wound left at the heart of my soul. A part of me wanted to stay there. A part of me _did_ , even long after I’d continued down my unforgiving path.

Dawn came upon the 10th day, and with it, Ikaros returned bearing perhaps the only promise Artemis might ever give: an amaranth dropped just at the tip of my spear.

_Someone, I tell you, in another time will remember us._

**Author's Note:**

> Elysion/Elysian fields: the islands of joy which were a paradisiac afterlife reserved for those chosen by the gods (usually for particularly righteous, pious or heroic lives)  
> Amaranth: red flower that was sacred to Artemis.  
> Cypress tree: sacred tree of Artemis
> 
> Kassandra tosses a bit of dirt on top of Daphnae because ancient Greeks held the belief that any unburied/uncovered dead bodies were an affront to the gods, and any person who did not immediately at least throw a little bit of dirt symbolically on the deceased if they happened upon one, would be cursed. 
> 
> Ikaros disappears for a while because to the ancient Greeks, birds were messengers and also said to carry (or sometimes be) the souls of people who had passed on, travelling to the afterlife. He goes westward because that's where Elysion was said to be.
> 
> Hopefully next time I write an AC Odyssey fic it will be E rated and a little bit more uplifting.


End file.
